Academics

CURRENT RESEARCH

      Conducted within a developmental psychopathology framework research by our group revolves around the construct of resilience and positive youth development (Luthar, 2003; Luthar, 2006; Luthar & Brown, 2007;  Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000).  Core questions of interest are: What are the processes that help some children do well in spite of diverse stressors in their lives?  Across various spheres of development -psychological, emotional, interpersonal, and academic- how can children maximize their potentials and achieve competent, productive trajectories over time? 

           Currently, we are focused on three major programs of research.  The first involves middle- and high-school students from both wealthy and poor families, and the second involves children of mothers with major psychiatric illnesses.  In the third, we are attempting to understand what the experience of motherhood means, from a developmental perspective.

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       This program of research has its roots in a 1999 study involving two samples of 10^th graders - those from low-income, urban families and high-income, suburban families.  Findings showed that on several fronts the wealthy children fared more poorly than did their low-income counterparts.  Specifically, they reported much higher levels of cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use as well as significantly greater anxiety; in addition, suburban girls reported startlingly high levels of depression (Luthar & D'Avanzo, 1999).

           In a subsequent study, we considered whether the problems seen among wealthy 10^th graders might be seen among younger children as well, and also began to explore possible causes of such distress among these apparently "privileged" youth.  Our results showed that affluent sixth graders seemed to be relatively untroubled, but seventh graders did show some beginning signs of distress, again, chiefly in relation to overall substance use, anxiety, and depression among girls.  Exploration of possible reasons for distress showed that two factors seemed to be implicated; one was excessive pressures to achieve, and the other was isolation (physical and emotional) from parents (Luthar & Becker, 2002).

           These findings led to the initiation of a long-term follow-up study of a new cohort of about 350 suburban middle school students, whom we have assessed each year since 1999 when they were sixth graders.  This project is still ongoing; our hope is to continue to follow these youth through their transition to young adulthood.  Alongside the 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade assessments of this suburban cohort, we also conducted parallel assessments of a low-income, urban cohort, so that we could begin to disentangle major processes in development across these two very different contexts.

           Our first comparison of these two groups of students, when they were 6^th graders, was focused on aspects of family relations, and again, findings showed that the high-income students were, in fact, no more "privileged" than were their inner-city counterparts.  Across various relationship dimensions wealthy suburban youth perceived their parents no more positively than did students who lived in harsh conditions of urban poverty.  Furthermore, in the rich community just as in the poor one, children who felt close to their parents excelled across different domains; those who felt distant from their parents tended to be at risk for emotional as well as academic problems (Luthar & Latendresse, 2005b).

           Peer pressure is widely believed to have a strong effect on their development, and in our next study, we examined the degree to which wealthy and poor youth might serve as both positive and negative socializing influences (Becker & Luthar, 2004).  Again, we found more similarities than differences:  Early adolescents in both settings were somewhat admiring of classmates who openly flouted authority.

           As noted earlier, we have followed this suburban 6^th grade cohort through high school and have found several issues of concern.  As high school sophomores, for example, these youth reported significantly higher levels of substance use as compared to national normative samples.   They also said that their parents were generally more tolerant of their substance use than of other adolescent "misbehaviors", such as rudeness to adults or minor acts of delinquency.  And (not surprisingly) greater perceived parent lenience of substance use was related to more frequent use of drugs and alcohol by the teens (Luthar & Goldstein, 2008).  Subsequent analyses revealed that substance use during high school was not without its consequences.  Sophomores reporting marijuana use, in particular, tended to achieve significantly poorer academic grades than others during their last three years of high school (Ansary & Luthar, 2009).

        In recent years, we have extended our work with teens in our longitudinal cohort to cover also (a) private schools serving high-income families in large cities, and (b) suburban youth in areas other than the North East.   Collectively, these data suggest that the problems of affluent youth seem to generalize beyond a particular community or geographic area.  Across multiple samples, we are seeing that affluent youth report, on average, more difficulties than national normative samples not only in substance use but also other problems including internalizing symptoms (such as depression and anxiety), self-injurious behaviors, and random acts of delinquency (Luthar & Barkin, 2012; Luthar & Goldstein, 2008; Yates, Tracy, & Luthar, 2008).    

           In addition to the topics listed above, doctoral students are currently exploring a range of questions based on the data we already have.  To illustrate, ongoing projects are focused on the long-term effects of different dimensions of family relationships; the role of eating disorders and body image problems in suburban girls' vulnerability to depression; the long-term effects of problems such as depression, anxiety, and substance use on adolescents' academic grades; the degree to which neighborhoods' characteristics (such as isolation and alienation versus support and helpfulness) might contribute to adolescent's adjustment; and attitudes toward help-seeking from community professionals (e.g., concerns about the privacy of family problems).

Children of mothers with major mental illnesses

            A second area of ongoing research is on resilience and vulnerability among children of mothers with major psychiatric disorders such as drug abuse, and depressive or anxiety disorders.  This programmatic research is ongoing in New Haven, CT, and began with research on families of cocaine and heroin addicts, which revealed that 8-17 year old children of substance abusing mothers were at high risk for many problems.  More specifically, almost two thirds of these children had at least one major psychiatric disorder themselves by the average age of 12 years (Luthar, Cushing, Merikangas, & Rounsaville, 1998).

            In subsequent work, we considered the degree to which vulnerability might be conferred by maternal drug abuse per se and / or by depressive and anxiety disorders, which often co-exist with addiction among women.  In a new study, we recruited three groups of mothers: those with histories of cocaine or heroin abuse; depression or anxiety; or neither of these sets of diagnoses.  An initial exploration of a subset of approximately 200 mothers and their children in this sample showed, in fact, that maternal depression was apparently more deleterious for children than was maternal drug abuse: children of drug abusing mothers had lower rates of psychiatric disorders than did offspring of depressed mothers (Luthar, D'Avanzo, & Hites, 2003).  With completion of data collection for this study - 361 mother-child dyads - we are now conducting further, in-depth analyses of relative child vulnerability as a function of maternal diagnoses.

            In an extension of this study, we obtained funding to conduct follow-up assessments of this cohort of mothers and children, four and a half years after their original assessments.  We reasoned that whereas drug abusers' children seemed less vulnerable than depressed mothers' children at the average age of 12 years, these differences could be reversed by middle and late adolescence - when the children could themselves begin to experiment with substances more freely.  This longitudinal follow-up study is currently underway.

            A recent extension of this work has been to recruit high socioeconomic status mothers with major mental illnesses as well.  Thus far, our work in this domain has been focused largely on low-income women and their children, but recently, we have begun to explore parallel issues among wealthy, highly-educated mothers as well.  There is an assumption that with the availability of economic resources for their parents' psychiatric treatment, children in these families would be relatively trouble-free, but there are no data available, so far, to validate or negate this assumption.

            In addition to continuing with the various psychiatric and psychological assessments described in our earlier works (Luthar et al., 2003; 1998), another exciting new extension of this work on mother-child dyads involves the inclusion of biological indices.  Specifically, we are now considering genetic factors in vulnerabilities to different disorders, as well as biological measures of stress-reactivity, as indexed, for example, by levels of the stress hormone cortisol, heart rate, and body temperature.   

            Another extension of this work involves psychotherapy research.  In the mid 1990's, we developed a parenting group psychotherapy for at-risk mothers, entitled Relational Psychotherapy Parenting Group.  This intervention was based on insight-oriented therapy, and its development reflected specific recognition of the challenges unique to women and mothers.  Initial evaluations showed that drug-abusing mothers who received this intervention fared significantly better, after treatment, than did those who received treatment as usual in their methadone clinics (Luthar & Suchman, 2000).  Following this initial assessment, we received funding for a larger randomized clinical trial, in which this treatment was tested against drug counseling.  Data from this new trial confirmed the importance of the supportive intervention for women in clinics.  (Luthar, Suchman, & Altomare, 2007).

            As with the school-based research, doctoral students at Teachers College are currently exploring various aspects of these data of mothers with major mental illnesses and their offspring.  Examples of topics considered are further analyses of child vulnerability as a function of different maternal diagnoses; long-term effects of maternal depression versus substance abuse; the role of intelligence as a potential "protective factor"; and major antecedents of academic or educational resilience. 

Motherhood: Developmental phenomenology

 In developmental research, women are typically considered in terms of their behaviors as mothers - rarely in terms of their own personhood.  In an internet-based survey (www.MomsAsPeople.com), we are exploring how women  feel about their different roles -- not only as mothers, but also as spouses, friends, workers (in and out of the home), individuals with various hopes and fears -- and how they cope with the challenge of balancing multiple roles.

References (for more citations, please see Bibliography under "CV") 

Principal Investigator: Family Research Consortium - V. National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, OBSSR; (R13 MH082592-01); Dates: May 01, 2008 - April 30, 2011.